Review of technical demographic studies since 1994: where are the demographers?

Joshua O. Akinyemi, University of Ibadan and University of the Witwatersrand
Sunday A. Adedini, Obafemi Awolowo University and University of the Witwatersrand

Amidst spirited efforts to revive teaching, training and research in technical demography, threats to its survival seems not abating. In this paper, we provide a review of developments in the field and empirically demonstrate that there has been a decline in the proportion of technical demographic studies published in the last two decades. All original articles published in six demographic journals from Africa, Europe, Australia and United States were reviewed to assess the number of research publications in technical demography. A total of 3265 studies were published in 317 issues of the selected journals between 1994 and June 2015 of which 233 (7.0%) were technical demography . The proportion of technical demographic studies declined gradually at an annual rate of 0.45% (CI= 0.29-0.62 ) between 1994 (13.0% ) and 2015 (6.0%). The discipline need to be strengthened especially in developing countries as the international community set agenda for post-2015 development goals.